Love Sick Page 14

  It was the first stop on my walking tour of Brooklyn Heights with Jeremy. I showed him the garden apartment filled with exercise equipment that had been Capote’s actual home and then recounted my story of meeting the present owner.

  I was in a cool perspiration of relief. He was a little taller than me, thin, with graying hair and beard, hipster glasses and a broadcloth shirt hanging out of his jeans. It’s not that his photos were ugly, but I felt comfortable with his body and his style. I felt we fit, like two spoons that could coexist in a spoon nest.

  I didn’t feel fat as we walked down Orange Street. In my cotton skirt and red huarache slides, I felt tall and strong and smart. I pointed out the early nineteenth-century wooden colonial houses that have survived fires and nor’easters, described how the likes of Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee had scrummed together on the part of Middagh Street that was whacked off for the BQE, and asked questions about his garden and who was feeding the chickens that night. We backtracked to see the carriage house Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller shared, with an excursion to Montague Terrace to see the buildings W. H. Auden and Thomas Wolfe lived in. I was thrilled to show my little inspirations to someone who could appreciate them, but when I asked if he wanted to see the most darling street this side of Washington Square Mews, he looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “It’s really hot out,” he said.

  “Oh.” It was and I felt it, but if the humidity isn’t fuzzing the horizon, I try not to complain. “Do you want to go somewhere?”

  “I’d like to get something to eat, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. What’s your pleasure?”

  We went into that rigmarole of what’s-good versus what-are-you-in-the-mood-for and, finally, he opted for sushi.

  Sushi. God’s way of telling tuna they should have crawled out of the primordial muck with the arthropods.

  I like my fish cooked and I have an unbreakable no sucker cups/no jet propulsion rule that pretty much leaves me with an artful display of California roll.

  Then I remembered Bette’s birthday at a local Asian restaurant, with balloons and crepe paper and silly hats and plates of Indian pancakes and vegetable tempura. They had actual food on their menu as well as eel, squid, skin and roe.

  We were both grateful for the air-conditioning, and we gulped at our ice water. Despite the uncooked tides the chef was fashioning in colorful fastidiousness, Jeremy ordered broiled fish with steamed vegetables—ordinary food. I brightened and leaned in to concentrate on the ideas for books he wanted to run by me.

  “One of the things that pisses me off the most is that cleaning products do the opposite of what they’re supposed to,” he said. “Take Pledge, for instance. It leaves a film that actually attracts more dust. What do you think about a book about how consumers are ripped off?”

  I made my Thinking Face, the one where I sort of flatten my lips together in a long line that says, “Huh!”

  “Well . . . I dunno,” I stalled. “You have to think who your readership will be and where they get their information. There’s Consumer Reports and the Web and Hints from Heloise readily available.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  Our meals came and we busied ourselves with cutlery while I searched for a way to spin his idea.

  “I’d suggest alternative cleaning methods except that I have a set of books about using baking powder and salt that are close to that.”

  “This is the most phenomenal mackerel I’ve ever had,” he said, changing the subject and looking up at me. His eyes were the color of old-fashioned, well-worn blue jeans.

  “Really? I’m so pleased! I always worry when I pick a restaurant.”

  “Unbelievably good. I’ve got to try to make this for Katie.”

  “Maybe that’s what you should write about: raising a fish-eating twelve-year-old.”

  He laughed. “Once we were driving home from a band concert in Kingston and I decided we’d stop for Kentucky Fried Chicken. I told her, ‘This is why you have to grow up. So you can eat KFC any time you want.’ Katie would be happy living at home for the rest of her life.”

  “My grand-niece is like that. She lives with her parents on ten acres in Oregon and would be happy raising goats and rabbits and spinning yarn and looking up recipes online.”

  “We should introduce them. Angora or mohair?”

  I smiled my rarest smile. I felt as on the verge of possibility as a cashmere kid finding its feet for the first time.

  It was time to go meet Daisy.

  I warned him how small my apartment is, that I have enough books to fill a Staten Island ferry, that even bright lights leave pockets of murk. I told him Daisy would rush to meet him and to expect a European exchange of kisses and that when he sat down, she would sit with him like a Park Avenue hostess tuned to the latest messenger of scandal.

  I warned him.

  He sat on the love seat and Daisy draped one paw over his shoulder and gave him a good sniffing over as he looked around.

  “It’s . . .”

  “. . . really small,” I supplied.

  “Yes. And really . . .”

  “. . . crowded?”

  “How do you live like this?”

  I like my stuff. It reminds me who I am on days when the Black Dog of depression has me in its jaws. I can’t be so terrible if I’ve read all that Tudor history or have a That Girl Barbie next to a—oh, heavens. I hadn’t dusted the nuns.

  “I’m used to it. I focus so hard that I don’t feel that confined. And Daisy is always within petting distance.”

  “Daisy is quite . . .”

  I cocked my head. “Beautiful? Smart? Affectionate?”

  “. . . friendly.”

  The air quotes around the word crackled like distant thunder.

  “Can I get you—?”

  “Didn’t you tell me about the view of the city from a park nearby? Let’s go someplace less . . . doggy.” He sniffed to underline his point.

  It was near sunset and the Promenade was exactly where we should be.

  We ambled south, far enough along to see the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, in companionable silence. The sun was turning the world behind us apricot. The Promenade was thronged with tourists and tripods, parents and strollers, toddlers in pajamas eating ice cream. We stopped to watch the gravid sun hover on the New Jersey horizon.

  “This has been good,” I said.

  “It has,” he agreed. “I enjoy talking to you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “And getting to see Brooklyn Heights. It’s pretty here. I didn’t know you could be this close to Manhattan and be almost bucolic.”

  I smiled. I liked the word “bucolic.”

  “I’d like to know more of you,” he continued. “And yet . . .”

  I turned to him.

  “I don’t feel It. I thought I would. You’re wonderful and smart and funny and pretty, but I don’t feel It. The Thing. You know.”

  Of course I know.

  “Let me show you back to the parking garage.”

  We trudged four blocks in silence. I blinked back tears until we got to the mouth of the garage.

  “It was great,” he said. “I’d like to—” He finally looked up at me. I held out my hand, said, “Drive safely” and watched until he was swallowed by the cave of the car park.

  Three hours earlier I had walked beside a man of poetry and music and ripening corn and I’d felt long-legged and sure and keen. Now, as soon as he was out of sight, I went into Gristedes. Daisy will fill the bed just fine, I told myself.

  Especially if I have Mission to Marzipan ice cream and Stella Dora almond cookies.

  Nine

  The orchid releases a chemical that makes bees drunk. When the bee becomes disoriented, it dumps its load of pollen into the flower, thus pollinati
ng the flower.

  The Galean-Jeremy-Mission-to-Marzipan hangover wasn’t pretty. I taught my classes, came home and read chick lit novels, finishing one and downloading another onto my Kindle before I could so much as roll over in bed. I looked for clues in them, but mostly I wanted the formula: kooky girl with the wrong guy changes her career and man. I shunned my friends and sank into cynicism. When Caroline called to sign me up for the JDate Speed Date, I responded with a sour joke. “Do you know that a whale’s penis is called a dork? So which came first, the dork or the dick?”

  She laughed but said, “I wouldn’t share that with a bunch of nice Jewish men, if I were you.”

  “You know how Nora Ephron defined a Jewish Prince? He comes into the living room and says, ‘Honey, do we have any ice cubes?’”

  “It’s attitude, Frances. You gotta have the right attitude.”

  “Uh-huh. So what’s your excuse for being fifty-three years old and never married?”

  Carol told me later that they had a good time at the speed date. A banker and a real estate agent asked for Caroline’s number and Meg met a college girlfriend whom she got tipsy with.

  I turned to Will for his post-mortem on my most recent dating debacle.

  “I feel for ya, France,” Will said, “but think of it this way. You came close. You actually met some guys you liked for a change.”

  “Great,” I said. “That and two-fifty will get me to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I can light a candle for my slutty, messy, adulterous soul.”

  “Are you an adulterer if you’re not married?” he asked. “I think Jeremy was the one who contemplated mortal sin.”

  “The thing about you men,” I began to pronounce, “is that you can’t take it step-by-step with a prospective partner. You know, you meet and you like her but not sexually. But you have a lot to talk about or things you could do together and have fun. Maybe you talk some more and see each other some more and find yourself falling in love. I haven’t said no to a second date in years because of that.”

  “What really went wrong, France? Think. You had a great time with Galean. You laughed and you fooled around. Then nothing. What happened between fooling around and nothing?”

  I was quiet, reconstructing that afternoon. Daisy wanted to be part of the petting. We were tired and evening was coming on so we walked him to the subway. I smoked a cigarette.

  “Jeremy was annoyed by Daisy, too. He made a comment about the dog hair getting to his allergies. He has a cat, for God’s sake! How could he be allergic to dog hair?”

  “Allgery-schmallergy,” he said. “That’s why God invented Claritin.”

  “I don’t think he liked the Bat Cave.”

  “The Bat Cave is fine.”

  “He complained about the heat. It was a hot day. I was running him all over the Heights showing him stuff.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to be with a woman who can walk past the end of the block.”

  “Oh. My. God. You mean, I was too . . . thin?” I was choking with laughter.

  “You’ve picked some winners, Frances.”

  • • •

  He was right, although not quite in the way he meant it. Galean and Jeremy were good guys, but I was wrapped up in the role I was auditioning for: finding a happy ending. I cleaned my apartment—for men. I had my hair and eyebrows done—for men. I talked about the books they might want to write and prayed my musical taste would pass muster and that Daisy would behave. For men.

  Bull. Shit. Daisy always behaves. She behaves like Daisy. Craven in her greed and reactions, and completely egocentric. I have a vast collection of music that I love. I didn’t need Galean or Lou or even Dar to approve what I listen to.

  Dar. Back to Dar. Dar hadn’t minded the dog hair or the Bat Cave or Daisy wrapped around his leg humping him for dear life. I missed him. In the weeks of Galean and Jeremy, with my hopes high, Dar wasn’t on my heart. When my hopes were dashed, it was back to Dar-this and Ben-and-Jerry-that. I was back to feeling rejectable.

  Here’s what Bette was right about: I picked this stage to reveal myself on and I was bleak and empty after three months of treading the boards.

  But maybe I didn’t need a guy. Maybe I needed me.

  • • •

  Time passed. Enrollment plummeted and I was no longer teaching. Dog walking was once again keeping me afloat while I dithered about finishing my novel or going out on the Modern Language Association career job hunt. If I got a job, what about Kevin and the farmette? How could I credibly say that teaching is a talent as innate as being able to carry a tune and that teaching is standing in front of a class in order to create a cocktail hour in which they can learn something through themselves, the work, each other, me? Hell, I consider myself a success when I can get them to use “its” and “it’s” properly.

  Despite adjuncting, I had stopped fitting into the mainstream of anything years ago, maybe when I got a job in publishing instead of finding a doctorate program in creative writing. I think I know more about the real world than most creative writing teachers do, but I didn’t play the game my teacher Richard Hugo called po-biz.* Was that failure or boldness?

  Maybe luckily, I found myself beset with dogs when a colleague took a two-week vacation. That September was murderously hot and humid and I couldn’t find anything in my arsenal of walking shoes that was comfortable. After two days, I had angry purple blisters between my toes. I sterilized a needle at my gas stove, hopped to the bathroom and closed my eyes before piercing them. Dang, I thought. I wrote a dog-walking column for a local blog and I don’t think I covered blisters in my “What Hurts Today?” piece. At least not bloody blisters. But back then I didn’t have days that started at 7:30 a.m. and ended at 8:00 p.m.

  There was one spell of a few hours, between 8:15 and 10:30, when I could have breakfast, write a few emails and allow myself some cynical charm by a highly poetic email romance with a man I’ll call Dream Catcher. Like a bottle of cold water on these hot, humid fall days, he was oozing sensuality:

  a rampage of fireflies

  shatters my heart,

  shatters my reason, burns—

  until you drown me, moon-washed

  river of all desire

  In those mornings, and in the few minutes I had between gigs in the afternoon, we flirted, the poetry getting cheaper by the day.

  Dream Catcher was married. He and his wife apparently couldn’t stand each other but he wouldn’t leave her because his kids were getting to the age of having their own children and their loyalty to their mother would prevent him from being a grandpa. Also, divorce was financially crippling.

  Before I got completely exhausted from this new schedule of dogs, I was stupid enough to be aroused and to admit it. Here’s a lesson I don’t want to put in bold letters: When a woman cuts to slang in referring to her nether-regions, men start foaming at the mouth with lust. He begged to come over one morning, any morning, to make love to me.

  But those mornings I was already beaten by the 90 degrees of high humidity I’d be facing in a couple of hours. My erotic thoughts dwindled. It was hard to write poems about picking up after a greyhound with a tummy ache.

  His emails laughed when I explained. He would tend my wounds. He would take care of me for two hours a week, right after he got back from a family vacation in the Green Mountains.

  But I didn’t want to be tended. I wanted to go to Gettysburg and make love in a four-poster bed in a two-hundred-year-old bed-and-breakfast. I wanted to go to the movies, do sloppy quiet things during Crazy Stupid Love and then go drink coffee and talk about it after.

  And that was what he couldn’t give me. He couldn’t even consider that, knowing me better, he might want to give me those things.

  I could kind of understand his hopes of finding a mistress. He was my age and had been talking to/saving for/arguing over/sleeping with one person f
or thirty years. Thirty years! As often as not, a thirty-year-old person has his/her own kids and a mortgage and a specific career. Whole lives can mature in the course of thirty years—and whole lives can be disassociated. Living in a husk of a marriage would be as miserable as falling in love with a married man who wants to visit my bed at eight in the morning, on his way to work.

  But if Mrs. Dream Catcher wasn’t unhappy enough to go looking for a new shaman she could call her own, then she wanted to keep the marriage intact. His infidelities were the exponential echoes of the anger and pain a divorce would cost her.

  There may truly be such a thing as an open marriage, but not if there are children and not if opening it was only one partner’s idea. And it can close with a clap as sudden as a catfight.

  For the sake of argument, then, a good rule of thumb is, simply, no married men.

  • • •

  Another rule, closely related: A man must have his own place. Unless you’re much more Spartan and compulsive than I am, it’s not fair that the onus of cleaning is placed completely on the woman. Especially if she has a dog.

  • • •

  After that devilishly hard two weeks ended, it occurred to me that I might invite Dream Catcher over on a Thursday morning. I had fewer dogs on Thursday; I could force myself to get it together to clean the bathroom, scoop up the worst of the dog hair and put clean sheets on the bed. But Dream Catcher could not, when I told him about my dogs and deadlines, see that those are the who of me, the answers I gave Kevin last night when he asked how I am. Busy. Tired. Excited. Stressed. Amused. That moon-washed river is his what of me. Italian greyhounds and the book review for a friend that I was keen to post on Amazon interested him only insofar as they interrupted his fantasy or whether I could whisper them in bad blank verse.

  The detritus of my life is meaningful to Kevin and he doesn’t forget it from one day to the next. When it’s his turn to fret at feelings of emptiness I ask him what’s in bloom on his balcony or what he’s making for dinner for his sponsor.